Bachmann-Pawlenty grudge match

Michele Bachmann says there’s room enough for two Minnesota Republicans to run for president. Tim Pawlenty’s camp echoes that sentiment, insisting the former governor has “a good relationship” with the home-state congresswoman who suddenly poses a threat to his White House ambitions.

To hear them tell it, they’re happy to have each other in the 2012 race.

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While both are card-carrying Republicans, they are members of different GOP tribes, never at war but not exactly at peace either. Now the congresswoman and the former governor are on a crash course that could shed revealing light on an already distant and awkward relationship—testing the Minnesota Nice ethos.

Bachmann, who appears to be gearing up to run for president, and Pawlenty, who announced his candidacy last week, have been acquainted with each other for at least a decade, dating back to when the two served in the state legislature. Even then, they disagreed over Pawlenty’s potential.

In 2002, as a first-term state senator serving in the minority, Bachmann backed a more conservative candidate against Pawlenty, who was then the state House majority leader seeking a promotion to the governorship. Pawlenty ultimately won, setting the stage for years of mostly below-the-radar conflict between the two Republicans on issues ranging from tax breaks for rural counties to education policy and cigarette taxes. She bucked him repeatedly during his first term, rained on his parade in January by unexpectedly releasing her presidential trial balloon on the eve of his much-ballyhooed book tour, and is at present poised to take him on directly in Iowa, an early presidential state that will be key to both their fortunes.

“She gets frustrated with Tim, that he’s not as much ‘charge from the seat of your pants,’ and Tim looks at Michele and thinks she’s too seat of her pants,” said former Bachmann chief of staff Ron Carey, who chaired Minnesota’s Republican Party during four of Pawlenty’s years as governor. “There’s a little natural tension simply because of style, not of desired outcome.”

Former Republican state chair Ron Eibensteiner, who is backing Pawlenty, calls the relationship a “friendly rivalry”—and indeed there are few public signs of animosity between the two. In 2010, they made several political appearances together, including at an anti-abortion fund-raiser.

But that was then, before Bachmann began sounding like a presidential candidate.